1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a loading and unloading device for cargo containers, silos and other vessels.
2. Description of Related Art
For a long time, bulk goods haven been transported in standardized containers. The aim is to fill bulk goods into standardized loading aids for the purpose of transport with trucks, by railway or on board of ships. Containers are particularly well suited as loading aids. These containers consist of large volume vessels for the storage and transport of goods, with robust construction and sufficiently resistant to allow repeated use by several modes of transport without the necessity of transferring the contents. They exist in many different sizes and, as a rule, are standardized.
In addition, they are equipped with facilities to allow easy transfer from one mode of transport to another. The so-called ISO containers represent the most well-known and important type of container. These are in most cases 20 or 40 foot sea containers. These containers are used to process a large part of trading goods. They have the advantage that, due to their standardized shape and dimensions, they can be transported and quickly transferred by a wide variety of transport modes, such as ocean going ships, inland navigation vessels, railways and trucks.
Frequently, bulk goods are also stored in silos and bunkers, from which they must be removed and filled into such containers. Typical bulk goods are building materials such as top soil, sand, gravel, cement, other mineral goods such as ore, road salt and foodstuffs such as grain, sugar, salt, coffee, flour as well as powdery goods such as pigments, fillers, granulates, pellets, etc.
Bulk goods are often stored in silos or bunkers. There are transported either by continual, uninterrupted flowing modes, for example, belt conveyors and bucket conveyors, or by pneumatic-fluid conveyance by means of air flow, for example in bulk good holds or bunkers of ships, in skips and high-board vehicles, silo trucks, trucks, railway cars etc. in sacks or bags used as transport packaging for lightweight piece goods or bulk goods.
The loading and transport process of bulk goods is always subject to an elaborate and varied procedure. The following loading and transport procedure is described by way of example.
To begin with, for example, a tipping silo trailer, attached to a tractor-trailer with built-in air compressor, is loaded by means of compressed air with bulk goods from a high-rise silo. Subsequently, the goods are transported by road to the packaging industry. Here, the tipping silo trailer is unloaded into the stationary storage silo of the packaging company. After that, the bulk goods are packaged in Big Bags or sacks. The gods packaged in sacks or Big Bags are then transported by road to the sea port, where they are manually loaded into a sea container. In this procedure, for example, Big Bags are loaded into containers by fork lift trucks. Subsequently, the containers are loaded onto a container ship.
Naturally, this process may take place in various ways, e.g. loading from trucks onto railway cars, from there onto ships, from ships onto trucks, etc.
It has become apparent that there are considerable deficits in current processes and procedures with regard to unnecessary transport routes, excessive packaging, a lack of information flow as well as communication from one loading and transport stage to another. Thus, loading and transport processes are too cumbersome, too elaborate and too cost intensive. Beyond that, in conventional loading of containers with Big Bags, sacks or bulk loading by conveyor belt or screw, the full volume and tonnage of the container is not fully utilized.
The current loading and transport structure, namely the production of bulk goods, loading of bulk goods in tipping trailers or silo trailers, transport to the packaging industry, transport of packaged goods to the sea port, loading of goods into containers and sea transport to their destination, carries a considerable potential to achieve a higher level of allocation efficiency while saving resources and optimizing processing times.